The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII

by Marion Kummerow

  Margot’s expression turned wistful.

  “I’m a Berliner first and a German second, Gerlinde. I grew up in this city. You haven’t the slightest idea how free and vibrant it was before Hitler came to power and obliterated everything that made it the very heart of Europe – cosmopolitan, accepting every walk of life and every gender no matter how fluid, a home to refugees and a watering spot to the European intelligentsia. And he came and ruined it all. I never forgave him that.”

  “But what am I supposed to do now?” Gerlinde’s question came out shrill and frantic, almost hysterical. She felt utterly and irreversibly betrayed by the only person she still had faith in.

  Indeed, what was she to do now? A daughter of the Reich, who never knew that other, pre-Führer Berlin; who only knew one Germany – Großdeutschland – and had not the faintest idea of what to do with all this concept of freedom that Margot suddenly forced upon her, without any explanation.

  She thought she could cry on an old friend’s shoulder but that friend was a stranger now, still fascinating, yet vaguely threatening and much too friendly with Morris and who knew who else worked along with the Allies and who else hadn’t been executed contrary to what the Promi had said… Gerlinde’s head began pounding. She wished to get up and leave the room but her legs had suddenly grown much too heavy. Not an ounce of strength was left in her. They had bled her white with their games.

  “What are you supposed to do?” Margot’s warm palm was back on top of her head, comforting, familiar, like in the past. “For starters, have some lunch with us and then go and sleep on all that. Take a little nap. It’s a lot to take in.”

  Gerlinde paced restlessly around her bedroom. During lunch and much to the Americans’ delight, Margot told stories about the long-lost world of Weimar Berlin and its dives; about the iconic Metropolis and its infamous creator Fritz Lang who taught her the basics of cinematography; about some horrible misunderstanding with Leni Riefenstahl involving Paul that later remarkably turned into the tightest friendship between the two women; and about holding Erich Maria Remarque’s hand while he, filthy drunk and devastated, was crying in the back of a limousine because the Hitlerjugend had just ruined the premiere of his film, on Goebbels’s orders. Not a word was said about Gerlinde’s father. For the first time, Gerlinde heard Tadek laugh – Margot’s husband had quite a warped sense of humor that the Pole must have liked.

  To be sure, the entire affair with inviting Margot here was some elaborate trap. With infinite suspicion, Gerlinde continued to consider it, go over Margot’s anecdotes in her mind and search for hidden motives in them. But with the best will in the world, all Gerlinde could get out of them were bits and pieces of some dreamland, a parallel world, where people wrote and made films because one or the other idea moved them and not on Promi’s orders; where Jewish writers gathered at the Romanisches Café for a coffee and fresh gossip; where books were read and not burned in public squares under the supervision of the SS…

  Never before had Gerlinde heard about “the old world” from that angle. All that used to be said about it was invariably replete with “Jewish conspiracies,” “communist revolts,” and “disgusting, Weimar, drug-induced decadence.” From an early age, the youth was taught to loathe that old world. It was the new Reich that ought to have been glorified, according to their BDM leader. Der Führer saved us from the Weimar filth and poverty. He made Germany strong. He unified us Aryans, under his flag and delivered us from being overrun by the Eastern immigrant hordes.

  Gerlinde’s face changed slowly as she looked toward the window behind which the obliterated city lay. Over it, those very “Eastern hordes” now presided. All thanks to our Führer, a familiar slogan flashed through her mind, mocking and forever tainted. Suddenly, Gerlinde was overcome with an overwhelming desire to see the old, Weimar Berlin as Margot had seen it; suddenly, she began considering reading All Quiet on the Western Front. The way Margot had portrayed him, Remarque wasn’t such a bad fellow at all. Much too sensitive for his own good… It was a shame what the Gestapo did to his sister, too.

  Gerlinde hissed, as she pulled her finger away from her mouth and winced at the sight of blood. She hadn’t realized that she was biting it obsessively until she tore her cuticle completely off. She was never a nail-biter but now, she couldn’t get hold of herself. One thing Margot was right about – it was all too much to take in. Gerlinde felt as though her head would split in two any moment now.

  With a trembling hand, she pulled the curtain away from the window and stole a peek outside, into the bright, still-living world. The sun got caught on the gilded letters of the books and another hot wave washed over her. What if Margot was speaking the truth and life belonged to her now? Her life, to do with as she pleased. Gerlinde gulped, once, twice. How positively terrifying, to live without direction, without guidance from above, making her own decisions, thinking with her own head…

  With her eyes wide open, Gerlinde stared at the books, the door. Skittish and inexplicably hot, she ventured outside, down the stairs, into the hallway and listened to the voices. Inside the drawing-room, she found Morris. Frau Hanke was cleaning after the guests. Margot was long gone but her perfume still hung faintly in the air, familiar and oddly reassuring.

  “Agent Morris,” Gerlinde spoke with carefully faked resolve, “may I speak with you, please?”

  Even if he had been expecting her, his face didn’t betray anything. He calmly closed an issue of Stars and Stripes he was perusing and escorted Gerlinde into her father’s study, knowing how comfortable she felt there. Once they were inside, he closed the door. For some time, Gerlinde sat silently in her chair, staring at the painfully familiar desk and having not the faintest idea of where to begin. The windows were closed in the study and the air had grown stuffy and she was suddenly so very hot and speechless.

  Morris encouraged her with a gentle smile. “Miss Neumann, is something bothering you? You can talk to me about anything at all. It doesn’t have to be related to your father.”

  Slowly, with effort, she passed her hand over her forehead. The words refused to string themselves together into a sentence – alien, treasonous, even without being spoken yet. “Agent Morris, do you think…”

  She paused; looked as if she were about to say something but then turned away, ashamed of herself. She shouldn’t have come here. No deals with the enemy.

  “Gerlinde.” Such an inappropriate intimacy and such a genuine desire to help in Morris’s voice. “You’re not betraying your father by talking to me. It really is all right. He would want you to talk to someone. A friend, not an interrogator. Talk to me.”

  “It’s not about my father,” she grumbled a bit more defensively than she’d initially intended. “It’s about… what is it going to be now? For us, Germans, I mean? What kind of… government?” She cast him a probing glare. Morris encouraged her with a nod and a smile. “A military government? What will we have? What is life going to be now that you’re here?”

  “We won’t always be here. Someday, we shall leave.”

  She regarded him with great mistrust.

  “Yes, someday,” Morris continued pensively. “But before that, a lot of work needs to be done. We need to completely rework the entire system but most of all, we’ll need to rework people’s minds. After we do that, we shall leave. When we are certain that you people won’t make a mess out of yourselves once again.”

  On Gerlinde’s face, her smile mirrored his with uncertainty. She tried turning it into a smirk but it came out wistful, full of strange longing.

  “There shall be some temporary, allied-approved government, I should imagine,” Morris proceeded, “but in essence, it will be you, German people, who will be governing yourselves.”

  “Communists in the Soviet zone and former social-democrats in ours?”

  “For now.”

  For some time, Gerlinde considered, with her head tipped to one side.

  “What is it going to be, with social-democrats in
charge?” she asked at length.

  “I imagine like any other democracy.”

  “I don’t know anything about democrats except that they’re the enemy of the people.”

  “Why is that?” Morris seemed genuinely amused.

  “They always plotted against the Führer, from the very beginning.”

  “Did you like the Führer?”

  “He was very kind,” Gerlinde replied softly, averting her eyes.

  “To you?”

  “To me. To everyone around.”

  “His immediate circle.”

  “To the German people.”

  “A lot of them would respectfully disagree.”

  She looked up at him, sharply. Just now, upstairs in her bedroom, she was entertaining outright treasonous thoughts about the Führer but when Morris voiced them, some instinctive resistance rose in her.

  The OSS agent must have felt it, for he softened his tone at once, smiling conciliatorily, as he went on to explain his point: “Gerlinde, you lived in a very closed-off world. You never saw how it was for the regular citizens. You don’t know what they had to go through.”

  “I saw a lot at the hospital,” she argued, out of some childish spite.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “All those brave soldiers, all torn to shreds by the allied bombs and shrapnel.”

  “Those soldiers were sent to the war by your Führer. The war that was completely unnecessary.”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Why? The Lebensraum?”

  She pinched her lips, growing silent once again.

  “Why did you volunteer for the Red Cross, Gerlinde?”

  For some time, she sat silent, as though ashamed of the answer. “I couldn’t sit helplessly anymore like my mother and do nothing. Götz and Georg were fighting at the front and I… I had to do something. I had to help.”

  “It must have been terrible there and particularly closer to the end.”

  Such genuine empathy was the last thing Gerlinde had expected. For some time, she looked hard at Morris as if expecting some more arguments to follow about how they, the Germans, had brought it all on themselves but he appeared to be simply waiting for her to proceed with her story, with the same mild smile playing over his lips.

  “It was,” she confirmed at last, with visible effort. It was still difficult to talk about it and not only due to the war. There were also personal reasons but of those, Morris oughtn’t to worry. That was her trouble and hers alone. “I wasn’t afraid of blood or shredded limbs or burnt flesh. Herr Doktor soon allowed me to assist him, even with such little formal training. Vati signed the authorization for me to work there… Without his signature, they wouldn’t have allowed it. I was much too young. Mother was against it something horrible but he understood everything.” Suddenly, she looked up at Morris. “Will it be possible for me to become a doctor? An actual surgeon? A professor of medicine later, perhaps?”

  Morris smiled slowly, carefully concealing the hope which had ignited in his heart. She’d began thinking of the future. The iron grip of the past began to loosen.

  “I don’t see why not.” He shifted carefully in his seat. “Is that what you want to be? A surgeon?”

  “I don’t know yet. I think so. I was just asking.”

  She didn’t tell him that she wanted to be a famous photographer and a filmmaker when she was younger, like Margot von Steinhoff or Leni Riefenstahl – now, it didn’t matter. Even the idea of studying to become a surgeon was absolutely spontaneous. She had never seriously considered anything of this sort. All she wanted now was to hear that she could be all of these things if she wanted to. But now that Morris had confirmed it, she suddenly felt utterly exhausted as though after hours of interrogation. The burden of having all this freedom of choice to herself was all of a sudden too much to bear.

  “I feel tired, Agent Morris. May I be excused, please?”

  “Of course, Miss Neumann.” They were back to formal terms but the warmth was still there, slowly uncurling itself on Gerlinde’s chest like a cat. “Feel free to come down and fetch me anytime. I will always listen to you.”

  6

  “So which camp were you incarcerated in?”

  Gerlinde’s question came out of nowhere, as they jogged around the Neumann’s vast estate. Tadek stumbled and barely regained his footing, getting much too close to sprawling on the ground. Hardly Fräulein Neumann would stop to pick him up.

  “Auschwitz,” he answered somewhat stiffly.

  “So, you were a free man since when? January?”

  “Yes. I joined the Red Army right after the liberation.”

  Without pausing, Gerlinde gave him an evaluating once over. “You must have been in fine shape for them to take you into the army. Why do they tell us that you were all nearly starved to death there? Clearly, you had enough food. Why don’t you tell them to stop spreading such lies?”

  Tadek stopped abruptly. He had expected Gerlinde to continue her jog but, strangely enough, she stopped also and regarded him quizzically. “What?”

  For some time, he studied her face. It appeared she was patiently waiting for an explanation of some sort. Tadek passed his hand over his forehead, collecting the beads of sweat that had broken out there. He wasn’t too sure how to proceed.

  Carefully, he probed the waters. “I’m Jewish.”

  Gerlinde nodded, unimpressed. “I know.”

  “Morris told you?”

  “No. I gathered as much myself.”

  He pondered something. “Do you hate me then?”

  She snorted with good-natured disdain. “I hardly know you. Why would I hate you? I’m annoyed that the Amis brought you into the house but it doesn’t give me enough reason to hate you.”

  Tadek blinked, once again thrown off track. Was she pulling his leg? Whatever was the case, he decided to tread carefully. “Why do you think they put us in those camps?”

  Another dismissive shrug. “Protective custody orders. It was a wartime measure only. As soon as the war was over, you all would have been resettled, to the East, to farmlands. You would be like hired workers on the farm. Or factories. You would be employed according to your qualifications. But while the war was in progress, you all had to be taken into protective custody so that Eastern Judeo-Bolsheviks wouldn’t recruit you into their army. It appears such fears were justified; they did recruit you as soon as the opportunity presented itself. You said so yourself.”

  She recited it like a lesson, sure of her knowledge and without displaying a single shadow of doubt. A sad smile slowly passed over Tadek’s features without reaching his eyes. “My God…” he whispered to himself, regarding her, almost with sorrow, this time.

  Gerlinde scowled. “What?”

  It was a familiar, German ‘what,’ an angry half-a-shout. She was on guard once again.

  Tadek just shook his head without lowering his eyes. “You really do believe that, don’t you?” he said softly.

  “Of course, I believe that,” she replied, annoyed. “Do you believe that the sun rises in the East?”

  “Yes. I also believe that I put my own brother’s body on a gurney in the crematorium where I worked.”

  “Did the Amis teach you to say it to me?” She was growing agitated.

  “No.”

  “There were no crematoriums in Auschwitz! In any other camp either!”

  “Not anymore. The SS blew them up before pulling out and sending the survivors on a death march. I hid in the barracks and decided to wait for the Russians instead but I still saw the columns march off. Some walked barefoot on the snow. Whoever couldn’t keep pace was shot.”

  “Rot!” Gerlinde objected crossly. “Why would anyone shoot them? The SS was there to protect you! You were all valuable workers! Who shoots valuable workers?!”

  “If I’m lying about it all, answer me this. What am I doing here in your house, when I could have been home with my family? Where did my family go, if not into the oven? Where did all
of those displaced people’s families go?”

  She stepped toward him, her hands clenched into fists as she studied his eyes as though searching for signs of betrayal in their black mist. Tadek held her gaze, perfectly calm and infinitely patient.

  “You’re lying,” she repeated once again but her voice faltered this time.

  “No.”

  “They told you to say it to me. Perhaps, they promised you money. It’s a trick of some sort, just like with Margot. You all are just trying to confuse me with all these lies.”

  “No one is trying to confuse you. And the Americans promised me nothing. They only wanted me to tell you how it was.”

  “But it isn’t how it was!”

  “I’m afraid, it is. They’re looking for your father because he was one of the men who were in charge of the camps’ administration. He is guilty, in part, for all of those people’s deaths.”

  “No, he’s not! I know my father. He wouldn’t do anything of that sort!”

  A faint, sorrowful smile was back on Tadek’s face.

  “Stop looking at me with such pity! I know what I’m saying!” She was outright screaming now.

  It should have been the other way around. He should have been screaming his accusations at her and shaking his finger in her face and she was supposed to stand there, arrogant and aloof, and calmly deny everything until the sun had set and he would have run out of steam, much like as happened with her American interrogators. Not Morris, from what Tadek had learned but the others.